The MAKE IT HAPPEN Guy

Hey everyone, I wanted to talk about a topic that can really make or break a social media (Facebook, Twitter) marketing campaign, and that is: IS IT ENGAGING?

In a world where online interactions are a meeting of equals between company and consumer, and a social interaction/conversation, if you can’t get people engaged, then they’re going to leave your website or Facebook Page and forget about you!

Here are some quick tips to keep your content engaging so your customers get involved, remember you, and share you with their friends online!

* Ask Questions (don’t just post facts and figures)

* Tell Stories (people remember stories and they build an emotional connection)

* Use Video (you’ll build a stronger bond because they can see your face and hear your voice)

* Be Conversational (don’t speak down to your prospects, treat them like equals and with respect)

* Run Contests (everyone likes to win!)

What do you think? Have you used these tactics successfully to engage your customers? Let me know by commenting on my blog!

Thanks and till next time, keep “Making It Happen” online!

Taylor

SO MANY clients and coaching students have asked me how they can actually use Facebook, in the real world, to help their small business or entrepreneurial venture, that I’ve decided to hold a FREE WEBINAR to answer common questions and help you on your way with Facebook marketing!

The webinar is Thursday, July 15 at 9:00pm EST. Here’s the link to register for the webinar. Register now so you can reserve your seat before we fill up!
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/496816041

The bottom line is that ANYONE can generate new leads and make money using Facebook. This is because Facebook removes the most common barriers to success in online marketing:

Common Success Barrier #1 – “I don’t have the technical skills”. Facebook SHATTERS this barrier to success, because everything is point and click. Literally, if you can read English, and you probably can since you’re on this blog, then you can use Facebook.

Common Success Barrier #2 – “I don’t have time to do all this stuff.” Well… I’m happy to report that you can attract new customers and get great, high-trust friend referrals for about 15 minutes a day, if you know what to do!

Common Success Barrier #3 – “I don’t have the money”. Folks, it’s hard to have a lower cost than zero, and that’s the cost of Facebook. That’s right, today’s most powerful marketing tool costs a whopping zero dollars!

All that’s standing between you and success using Facebook to market your business and make money is the knowledge of where to click and what to say… And that’s what I’ll be covering on my FREE webinar.

So, mark your calendar for Thursday, July 15 at 9:00pm EST, and be sure to click here to register. We have room for only 100 attendees, and based on the initial response, we’re going to fill up to capacity on this one quickly!

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/496816041

Thanks and “see” you on Thursday the 15th!

Taylor

As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you are probably trying to figure out how to use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to actually grow your business. Sure, Facebook is great for sharing baby pictures, and Twitter is great for sending 140-character thoughts into the great unknown, but can these social media tools really be used for something productive like finding new leads and customers? Well, I’m happy to answer “Yes” to that question, although I do have to qualify the answer: One needs to know what one is doing on these sites, and more importantly, needs to engage in a focused program of communication, to get real world results for one’s buisness. Unfortunately, you simply can not post a bunch of motivational quotes all over Faceboook every day and expect anyone to want to be your “Friend” or “Like” your business anymore. Maybe in 2007, but not today. In this piece, I’ll be teaching the exact how-to-steps of using Facebook’s Groups feature to grow your business, whether you have an online business or a traditional bricks and mortar business.

Groups are one of Facebook’s original and oldest features; they are a critical platform on the site, just like people’s personal Profiles, business Pages, and Events are primary tools for Facebook users. Facebook Groups are intended to allow people to gather support online for things like political causes, movements, awareness, interest in a hobby or niche, etc. This is important: Groups are not your business or brand’s home page on Facebook, that is what a Facebook Page is designed to be. Facebook Groups are for promoting and engaging in discussion of a larger topic that affects many people and many organizations. Many people make this easy mistake, and then find that no one wants to join their Group. The reason people don’t want to join a Group that is all about a specific person or company is that Facebook users are expecting a Group to be about a cause or other larger interest topic. As always, it’s a good idea to work within the generally accepted framework of Facebook users to get the most users as quickly as possible.

Here’s a quick example to crystalize the point: A Facebook Profile page is for “Taylor Garland”, a Facebook Page is for “Social Media Marketing Made Easy by Taylor Garland”, and a Facebook Group is “Social Media Marketing Entrepreneurs Group”. From another user’s perspective, if you want to talk to me or about me, you use my Profile, if you want to learn more about my business, you use my business’s Page, and if you are just interested in the broader topic of social media marketing, they you use the Group. So, for your business, you want to think about an interesting and compelling topic in your industry that people are talking a lot about right now. Then, you want to start a Group about that topic and engage users in discussion. Every time you post something in your Group, it will show up as being by you (your Profile), so people will know who you are just by being in the Group. This will automatically attract a certain percentage of them back to you and your business.

When you’re choosing a name for your Group, be sure to do some keyword research first. Use Google’s free “Keyword Tool External” (just Google search for that) and put in a basic keyword in your niche. So, for example, “carpentry”, or “bird watching”, or “save the whales”. Then, Google will think for a few seconds and come up with a nice big list of related keywords that get the most searches on Google. Sort the results by “Monthly Search Volume” so that the most-searched-for keywords or keyword phrases are at the top of the results list, and then make sure you use more popular rather than less popular keywords in your Group name if possible. Sometimes, you will be surprised to find that people generally think in terms of a totally different word or phrase than you happen to use when thinking about a niche. For example, you might think “environmental activism”, when most people actually type and think “save the whales” or “prevent oil spill”. These are important clues as to how to name your Facebook Group, and any websites or blogs you are working on, for that matter.

You an find the Groups function by clicking on Facebook’s logo in the upper left of your page, once you’re logged in, and then looking down the list on the left hand side of the page until you see “Groups”. After clicking on “Groups”, you will be taken to a page that shows all of the Groups you are a member of and that you have created. Click the “Create A Group” button at the top of the page to start a new Group. Facebook will then walk you through a short questionnaire about what your title, description, and some other settings are, and then you’ll be done. It should only take a couple of minutes and your Group will be created.

The next task is to pre-populate your Group with relevant and interesting information, before you attract anyone to your Group. If people come to a “dead” or empty Group, they will just click away and not join. So, take a week or so and come up with a bunch of interesting articles, videos, information, tips, etc. related to your topic and post them on the Wall, Discussion Board, etc. Also, make sure you completely fill out the Group’s profile so that it looks like someone cares about the Group! I know that sounds easy, but you’d be surprised how many people think it’s better to save the two minutes of thinking and typing and they have Groups that look half-baked… not the impression you’re trying to make!

Now you’re ready to invite a few people to join your Group. You don’t want to go blasting status updates on your main Facebook personal profile about your Group yet, and you don’t want to do any other “big marketing” of your Group yet. Right now you just want to invite 20 or 30 of your personal Facebook Friends to take a look at your Group, join if they want to, and give you feedback. This is key because a few of them will join, even though it’s basically an empty Group, since they’re your Friends. Now, when strangers find your Group, it will not look like a ghost town… there will actually be posts and interaction involving people other than you!

Once you have a few people other than you as members of your Group, it’s time to go for some bigger marketing efforts. Make sure you have some good content and discussion topics already in your Group, though, and make sure you are committed to checking your Group at least once a day or at the least every other day to engage in discussion, post more content, etc. The most obvious and most productive method of growing your Group is to find the most popular other Groups in your topic or industry by doing a Facebook search and scanning through the results in the “Groups” section of the search results. Given the size of Facebook (400 million-plus users) there are no doubt already some related or similar Groups. You want to join these other Groups, the more users the better, and get engaged in the Discussions. Some Group Administrators (that’s the person that started the Group, like you) will allow Wall posts and Discussion comments to mention other Groups and, when you find a large Group with those rules, you are in business.

You should genuinely get involved in the discussions in other Groups, but also occasionally mention your Group, and you will find that people interested in your industry or topic will also join your Group. Over time, if you are active for a couple of months every day or every other day, you will see your Group start to pick up momentum and your membership will grow. You are now in a great position as a business owner, because you have respect as an Admin of the Group and the position of authority. What you have really done, when you strip it all away, is found good, targeted prospects and then built a personal relationship with them using Facebook Groups. Now, when they need the product or service that your company offers, they will naturally think of you, because of the online relationship that you have built with them. It’s the same “know, like and trust” philosophy of traditional marketing, just applied inside the world of Facebook!

Hundreds of millions of people have websites and blogs up and running right now, but less than one percent of them are actually profitable. Some are not intended to be profitable, but most people would at least like to be making some money running ads or affiliate links on their website or blog. So, setting up a blog is very easy, with the advent of Blogger, Wordpress, etc., but getting one to make you money is much, much less likely to happen for the average blog-o-preneur. What is the difference between websites and blogs that actually generate sales, and those that don’t? It’s simple: the knowledge of how to do it, the focus to execute on your plan every day, and the persistence and flexibility to tweak your actions until you make it work. In this piece, I am going to boil down into the simplest and most critical elements, how to go from blogger or website owner to successful entrepreneur.

First of all, let’s dispense with a few myths and topics of great discussion, worry and consternation for new online entrepreneurs.

Myth #1: “It matters what product I’m selling.” INCORRECT! You need to focus on your target market, and their wants and needs, your marketing message to them, and if they are responding well to it. Then, later, if you want to find a slightly better widget to sell, go nuts. But don’t spend two days of internet research trying to find the “perfect” product before you even know if you are going to be able to sell anything to anybody! Also, for purposes of this discussion, it doesn’t matter if you’re selling a physical product, a digital info product, a service, etc. If you can sell one, you can sell the other. Learn to sell first.

Myth #2: “But I’ve never sold anything before, what if I can’t sell?” NOPE, I’M NOT ACCEPTING THAT ONE EITHER! The beautiful thing about online marketing, if you are new to selling, is that you don’t have to interact face to face if you don’t want to. It would certainly help your business to hold Meetup groups and seminars relevant to your niche, but it’s not necessary. Plenty of awkward, anti-social geeks and other misfits have made millions of dollars selling online. So, just don’t worry about it. As to the technical stuff of how to execute the steps needed to sell something on your website or blog, it’s just not that hard anymore. I would venture to guess that with the advent of Wordpress’s blogging and content management platform, PayPal’s one-stop shopping cart, and places like Amazon and ClickBank for products, selling online now requires 10% of the technical and set up time compared to 5 years ago. I may be talking about steps you’ve never taken before in this article, but trust me, from “in the trenches” I’m telling you, if you can find this piece online, and you can read and send emails, you’re ready to go.

Myth #3: “I have an old school HTML-table-style website, not a fancy Wordpress blog.” While Wordpress blogs are great for both content and selling, and I use them for both and constantly sing their praises, if you have an old school website and just want to make some money, don’t spend the time to get familiar with Wordpress right now, just go with what you have so that you can convince yourself that you really can make money online. Then get a Wordpress blog.

Okay, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s get right into the nuts and bolts of what to sell on your site and now to sell it.

Regarding what to sell, you need to put yourself in your market’s shoes. If you already have a large flow of traffic to your site, then figure out who those people are, what they want (using free Google Analytics, surveys, etc.) and give it to them. If you do not have traffic really coming to your site, then determine your target market. Don’t worry about whether or not your niche is “big enough”. There is probably a big enough niche in purple basket weaving to make a million dollars. Just worry about if your niche is the kind of people that are psychologically ready to buy, have the money to buy, and are motivated to buy. For example, selling pain medication to someone with back pain is a lot easier than selling a closet organizer to a college student (who doesn’t care about cleanliness and can’t afford it anyway). (Hint: the easiest niches to sell things in are things like real estate education, internet marketing education, health/wellness/vitamins, relationships/dating, stocks and wealth building, etc… i.e. things people really care a lot about changing in their lives.)

Once you’ve come up with a niche that meets the above criteria, go to sites like Amazon and Clickbank and find a good quality looking product to offer that is positioned and marketed such that it takes away someone’s pain in a certain area of their life or business. You want to be offering the cure to someone’s problem, not just some vague, wishy-washy “might help you” kind of thing. This will make your life much easier, because it won’t be so hard for you to actually make the sale. It can be a physical product or an info product, either is fine.

Next, go on eLance or craigslist or your neighborhood teenager and find someone you think is competent and trustworthy to add the code that Amazon or Clickbank gave you to your website or blog. This is assuming you don’t know how to do it yourself. You should be paying something like $25 for this service, not more than that, because this will take someone no time at all if they are good. If you’re using Wordpress, just drop the code for the product advertisement from Amazon or Clickbank into an empty text widget and drag and drop it into one of your Sidebars, and you should be good to go.

Now, when thinking about how to sell your product, you want to identify the specific benefits of the product. A benefit is something like “helps them make money”, not “comes with two DVDs”. That second phrase is a feature, a description, not an actual benefit to the buyer. Then, make it very clear on your site what the benefits are. This is a common error – most people will hit you with lots of detailed features but not make it clear how that helps the buyer. Then, get at least three video testimonials from people who have used the product. Give away a few of the product if you have to, but video testimonials are super powerful because they provide real, live social proof that the product works and that you can be trusted as a seller to actually deliver the product. This is huge, especially because we’re talking about online marketing, not in person marketing, so you need to work extra hard to build trust and credibility. Video testimonials give you that trust and credibility.

Finally, make it easy for people to buy. I recommend PayPal’s very easy merchant service which is built into their service if you have a business account with them. They give you the code for a nice yellow “Buy Now” button, and you just drop it into your website (or have your “internet guy or gal” do that for you, like above). Then, people can either pay you with PayPal, or PayPal will process all the major credit cards for you and send you the money. This saves you the enormous hassle of setting up a merchant account before you even know if you are going to be doing any real business! Also, most people now trust PayPal, since it’s owned by eBay and processes lots of transactions successfully every day. So that helps your credibility too.

Hi everybody – Here’s the straight talk on how to use Meetup.com to grow your business, whether it’s an online business or an offline/bricks & mortar business! Meetup does a great job of promoting your local live events for you, and the people you meet live are SO much more likely to know, like and trust you enough to buy from you. So, enjoy my article below and check out this video for some screenshot training showing how to find and create groups in Meetup.com and what it looks like to be an organizer of a Meetup group. I’m sure you’ll agree that Meetup.com is one of the best designed, most user-friendly, no-brainer websites you’ve ever used!

There’s an old adage in the sales and marketing world that goes something like this: “Someone has to know, like and trust you before they buy from you”. This applies to all small businesses and entrepreneurial endeavors, whether you are a freelance graphic designer, a real estate agent, auto mechanic or art dealer. If you want to quickly build solid, trusting relationships with your prospects so that they turn into paying customers, you should be meeting them in person. Every interaction doesn’t need to be in person, but in my experience, someone who you have met in person is about three times more likely to become a customer than someone that has only seen a video of you online, or opted in to your email marketing list, etc. So, it’s worth it to occasionally, if not frequently, get out there and “press the flesh” like you’re running for office!

The primary modes of sensing and judging the world around us are visual, auditory and kinesthetic. (That’s seeing, hearing and touching.) Guess what the fastest and easiest way is to connect with someone on all three levels, so that they are most likely to trust you and therefore invest in your product or service? That’s right, it’s live, face-to-face meetings. And guess which online tool is the easiest and most effective way to set up, promote, organize and manage such live meetings? You guessed it: Meetup.com. This is a very, very easy to use and intuitive online tool that allows you to easily define your topic and also find and connect with people that are interested in your subject matter. To be the “Organizer” of a Meetup Group only costs $45 for three months, or $19 for one month, and in return for that small investment you get the ability to connect in person with your best prospects – i.e. those that are so enthusiastic about your subject or industry that they are willing to actually show up in person!

I have been truly impressed with the power of Meetup. Probably the best part of my experience with Meetup was the realization that they use the authority of Meetup as a company to essentially market your new group on your behalf, right when you are starting your group. When you start a group, 72 hours after the official launch time, Meetup automatically sends out an email blast to everyone in your geographic area that has indicated they are interested in whatever your subject matter is. This means that, unless you do a really poor job of describing your group and making it sound compelling, you will get some people joining right away. This is very powerful, because you now have an open line of communication with these folks since you are the Organizer of the Meetup Group. Even if you are new to online marketing, or promoting live meetings or seminars, you will have some momentum right away. My experience with Meetup was that when launching my first ever Meetup Group, 4 or 5 days after launching my Group, I had about 35 members! After three months and three actual live meetings, I had about 75. Your actual attendance at live events will be about 10-25% of your total membership, if your results are similar to mine.

Here are my best lessons learned and most productive ideas for using Meetup to grow your business.

1. Do a great job making your Meetup homepage professional and legitimate sounding. I spent at least three hours working on the copy (writing) and setting up all the group settings so that it would give the impression of a serious, organized, focused and helpful Meetup group. Many groups on Meetup just don’t look well cared-for, and there’s really no excuse for that. Take the time to do a good job, so that when people check out your group, they actually join your group. If no one joins, you won’t be able to grow your business, following, charity organization, etc.

2. Include a photo of yourself in your profile. This will let people see that you are a real person, and not some sketchy type hiding behind a photo of a sunset or their dog or something. You should always be careful with privacy online, but when trying to encourage people to meet you in person, live, you need to get them comfortable with you online first.

3. Always hold your Meetups in a public location. This is for your safety and the safety of your attendees. And, you will have a much easier time attracting folks to a nice, well-populated Starbucks or restaurant or hotel, rather than your house or some other private location.

4. Hold your meetup in a location that is easy to get to for your geographic area. I held mine at a Perkins restaurant at the intersection of the most major highway in our area and another well-populated road with lots of shopping and restaurants. This increased my turnout, because people could easily get to me by taking highways, even if they lived one town away.

5. Schedule your first meetup right away so that people have something to RSVP “Yes” to! Your prospects are the “hottest” when they are first looking at your Meetup Group’s page, so give them the chance to opt-in to a live meeting while they’re “hot”!

6. Don’t let your Meetup group sit idle for more than two weeks. After that, especially at the beginning, people will begin to forget who you are and lose interest, or they will figure you are not that serious. There are lots of meetups that never actually meet in person. What a waste! Make yours a very active, or at least semi-active group. The best other meetups I attend are actually weekly, and these take a lot of time and effort on the Organizer’s part, but they are well-attended and constantly growing the membership ranks.

7. Promise to give people some kind of incentive to show up. I chose to give out handouts of the slides in the presentation so that people wouldn’t have to scribble notes furiously the whole time.

8. Keep the time frame reasonable. For example, my Meetups are 7:00 – 8:30pm on Mondays or Wednesdays. I feel that going to 9:00 or 10:00 on a weeknight will make people less likely to attend in the future, after they realize that the Meetup group is pretty much killing their whole night and they can’t get home to tuck their kids into bed or watch their favorite TV show or whatever else is going on in their lives. So, my advice is to keep it concise, productive and efficient so you are respectful of everyone’s most valuable resource – their time.

9. Bring in guest speakers occasionally to spice things up. It gets pretty boring to hear the same person droning on every week or every month, so I think you will find better attendance and also better growth for your business if you reach out to other people in your niche and have them speak at your Meetup sometimes.

Till next time, keep “Making It Happen” online!

Taylor

Unless you’ve been hibernating like a bear in a cave for the last year, you are probably already aware that Wordpress is the premier platform for creating web sites both for personal use and business. That’s why everyone from professional bloggers to Fortune 500 businesses are using Wordpress. It’s the easiest to learn, most flexible, most Google-friendly, and all around fun system for getting your word out and attracting fans, customers and prospects. And best of all, it’s FREE!

This article is for you if you know you want a Wordpress blog but are not sure how to approach it efficiently and effectively. You know how these online technical things can go – before you know it, you’ve drank 8 cups of coffee, read a bunch of help forum articles, downloaded a bunch of junk, but are still spinning your wheels on the starting line. Well, not this time. You’ve come to the right article/blog post about getting going with Wordpress.

First of all, unless this is your second day using a computer, you MUST use Wordpress.ORG not Wordpress.COM. This is because your site will look so much more legitimate if you use the .ORG version of Wordpress. The problem with .COM is that your blog’s url ends up being like this: http:// taylorsnewblog. wordpress. com, which looks budget and ridiculous. If you’re just using Wordpress to post photos of your new baby, great, use .COM, but if you’re trying to build a business, even a small affiliate business or something else like that, please do yourself a huge favor and download Wordpress.ORG.

You can the Wordpress files at, guess where… Wordpress.org! Once you’ve downloaded the Wordpress files you will need to upload them to your hosting account. You might have a hosting account with someone like GoDaddy or my favorite, Host Gator. With either of these two services, since they are large companies with great customer service, you can call them up and they will either walk you through it or if you get a really nice person on the phone they will just do it for you on their end. How’s that for easy?

Then, once you have the Wordpress files in your hosting account, it’s time to pick a URL. You can register a URL with GoDaddy, who is the biggest in this business. So, go to GoDaddy.com and pick a URL (aka domain name) that makes sense for your endeavor. If you are trying to attract a certain audience to your blog, which I assume you are, then choose logical keywords and use them in your domain. For example, a domain name like http:// thecustompurpleknittedwinterhatstore .com is MUCH better for attracting traffic than a domain like http:// coolhats .com because you are selling specifically purple, knitted hats and that’s what your hottest, best customers will be typing in to Google when they’re ready to buy. You want to be specific and descriptive in your URL/domain selections. (A URL is the same thing as a domain name, by the way.)

Next is a step that took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the first time. I’m ashamed to admit it but I could not find the control panel (Wordpress calls it the Dashboard) for my blog the first time. Here’s where it is, if you are using Wordpress.org: go to http:// YOURBLOGDOMAINNAMEHERE.com/wp-admin That tricky “/wp-admin” part is how you get to your Dashboard. Once you’re logged in using the username and password you created earlier when you downloaded and installed Wordpress in your hosting account, you want to do a “test post” to make sure your blog is working. To do this, just click on Posts on the upper left side of the Dashboard, then click “New Post”. Fill in a title and body text and hit “Publish” on the right. That’s it, now go back to your blog’s home page and check it out. You should immediately see your first post front and center.

From there, getting videos and photos and RSS feeds and all kinds of other goodies on Wordpress is really a breeze. You can search the Wordpress Codex (their help section) or check out my blog for more information and tips about Wordpress. It’s such a widely used platform that there is a huge amount of good, free training information out there.

A final piece of advice: give yourself about 2-4 hours to get comfortable and familiar with Wordpress. Everything is hard and/or confusing the first time you do it, including walking, riding a bike, playing an instrument, talking, and just about everything else. The nice thing about Wordpress is that after only a couple hours you’ll be totally addicted and amazed by the easy of use, logical layout, and drag-and-drop style publishing. No HTML code necessary!

So, have fun with Wordpress and use it as your main hub online. You are now free to blog till your heart’s content!

Till next time, keep “Making It Happen” online!

Taylor

Everyone’s talking and tweeting about Twitter. But, sadly, most tweets are either meaningless drivel or they are useful information that gets ignored or not noticed by the intended audience. This article explains how to make sure your little 140-character bursts get noticed, passed around among friends and associates within your target market, and ultimately how a consistent regiment of tweets can grow your customer base virally. Most small business owners and online marketers are just blasting random tweets out there with affiliate links in them and hoping to make a few bucks. However, like most endeavors, by thinking through it a little more than the average person, you can massively improve your results.

The ideal tweet is one that gets immediately re-tweeted (forwarded) around among your exact target market like wildfire. This is only going to happen once in a while, but when it does, it’s powerful. In this kind of dream “tweet” scenario, you might get 200 people added to your list, rather than just an average of 2-5. You need to consciously shoot for this result every time you send a tweet, so that you increase your chances of it happening. Most of your tweets will fall short of this ideal result, but as they say on those ever-present motivational posters, “Aim for the stars, and you’ll land on the moon”.

The goal is just to grow your following and your attention level online, and with a consistent routine of tweets in the same niche, you can do this without a ton of time or effort. If you are sending one tweet per day for 30 days, you could expect to add let’s say 200 people to your email list (if you’re directing people to a squeeze page) or 200 people to become your follower on Twitter. If you’re not getting this result, you are probably missing something important, like your tweets are all over the place topic-wise, or your links aren’t working, or your market is simply not on Twitter, etc. For example, if you are selling medical lift chairs to people that are in the age group 80-100, you are going to have a lot tougher time on Twitter than if you are selling an iPhone app that helps college students tweet faster!

Here are the most important things you need to know to make sure your tweets are actually noticed and re-tweeted by people in your target market, which is what will lead to sales online:

1. Make sure your tweets are consistently incorporating keywords that are used in your niche; and make sure your niche is a tight, narrow niche. For example, your niche should be “Florida-friendly gardening for women”, not “gardening”.

2. Don’t have all of your tweets be “commercial” in nature. That is to say, don’t put shortened affiliate links or sales pitches in most of your tweets. Only be commercial in about 20% of your tweets. The majority (80%) of your communications should be helpful or entertaining information that is about your tight niche topic.

3. Write your own, original tweets. I can’t stress this enough! Most people are tweeting quotes by famous people. That is a ridiculous and lazy strategy. Just take the 1 minute and think up something in your own words. It doesn’t need to be an original idea or concept, it just needs to be in your own words. That makes it original. IMPORTANT – that is also Google’s definition of “original”, and original content gets ranked much higher than a bunch of re-hashed quotes by famous dead people!

Here are some examples of original tweets, just off the top of my head, again using this Florida gardening topic example:

“Don’t forget to water your in-ground plants twice as often as your potted plants”
“The spring is a great time to buy XYZ type plants”
“Miracle-Gro is the professional’s choice for plant food”

Not exactly ground-breaking stuff, right? Seriously, anyone can do it!

4. Don’t tweet too often, and don’t tweet too little. Specifically, if you tweet too often, people will stop reading your tweets as soon as they see your username come up at the beginning of the tweet. You don’t want that of course! If you tweet too little, people will forget who you are, and then will never look at your tweets or they will un-follow you on Twitter because they figure you’re irrelevant if you never tweet anything. So, you should be tweeting anywhere from every other day to twice per day. That’s the range: 0.5 tweets per day to 2.0 tweets per day.

5. Switch up your times of day for tweeting. This is because people check twitter at different times of day depending on their jobs, children, lifestyle, etc. You don’t need a special system to vary your tweet times, just don’t track it and by nature you will tweet sometimes in morning, afternoon, and evening. That’s great, nothing more complicated than that is needed.

6. If you’re including a link to an affiliate product you’re selling, or to your blog, or whatever, use a “link shortening service” like bit.ly or bud url. These services will allow you to track where clicks are coming from as well. You don’t want to burn up a bunch of your 140 characters on a URL unnecessarily. Plus, when people see a long affiliate type link they rarely click on it because it looks like a commercial site or a spam/virus type site not an informational site. People want to be entertained or informed on the internet, they don’t actually want to be “sold” anything, unless they’re ready to buy! Don’t you feel the same way? I sure do.

Okay folks, that’s what you need to know to use Twitter for more than just blasting little bits of chatter and drivel around the universe. This is one of the few strategies that really is fast and easy to implement. Video marketing, article marketing, blogs, etc. all take many hours to really get up and running, but you can start getting some traction with Twitter in just days or weeks of spending about 15 minutes a day. So have fun with it and don’t work too hard. May the little blue bird of Twitter bring you many targeted, happy customers that re-tweet your tips and information to even more customers!

Keep “Making It Happen” online!

– Your Buddy Taylor

Hi, Taylor Garland here, the Make It Happen Guy for Online Marketing,

Local, live events are one of the most powerful ways to grow your small business. Even if you have global ambitions, or if you think your product isn’t really suited for live meetings.

At live events, you get a 100x better connection with people because of the high trust factor. I’ve seen this in my own live Meetup Groups and Seminar, and in other marketers’ events that I attend.

You can also get instant feedback about new products, services, and on your “elevator speech” and marketing! From a real human being, live!

I strongly suggest that you DREAM UP AN EXCUSE to host a local, live meeting either about your product/service, or about some topic related to it, and then market this event on Facebook. Be sure to offer a compelling “FREE BONUS” for attending!

Most people would rather sit at home and watch “Real Housewives of the Jersey Shore” or whatever terrible shows are lurking around in your TV these days, so you need to give them a bonus to convince them to attend.

Once you’ve got your event planned, just make sure you create a Facebook Event for it so it can be found on Facebook. To create a Facebook Event, it only costs $4,000. Just kidding, it’s FREE and it takes about 30 SECONDS! Here’s how:

1. Log in to your Facebook account
2. Click the Facebook logo in upper left to make sure you’re on the main page
3. From the list on the left, select “Events”
4. Click the button “Create an Event”, which is in the upper right of your screen
5. Answer the questions about your event
6. You’re done, now make a margherita!

The cool thing about Facebook Events is that when one of your Facebook Friends or Fans (Fans are friends of your business) clicks the button that they will attend/RSVP, this information shows up on all of their friends walls! That’s just Facebook doing what Facebook does best… letting people know what their friends are up to.

It’s the same for any Facebook feature really, because of the intensely social and viral nature of Facebook. Some examples:

* A Facebook FAN is worth more than a business card dropped in a bucket on your counter.

* A Facebook PAGE is more powerful than a regular old website.

* A Facebook GROUP is more powerful than a Google Group or Yahoo Group.

* A Facebook EVENT will turbocharge your local marketing efforts by allowing the Event to easily be seen and shared by your core audience. Basically, you’ll get friends and family referral attendees at your event without working very hard for them. Works for me!

Check out the video above to see a little tutorial on how to create a Facebook Event – you can watch my screen as I walk you through the steps!

Till next time, keep making it happen!

Taylor

Your President is using social media. The US Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia is using Facebook. If you’re not using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to grow your business, the only question you should be asking yourself is “how can I get started”! We all know the government isn’t usually the first to jump on useful new technologies, so if they’re on the bandwagon now, then social media is officially here to stay.

The last time President Obama visited Africa, he took questions online from Africans. He got an amazing 17,000 responses online.

The US Embassy in Indonesia recently grew its number of Facebook Fans from 36,000 to 120,000 in one month. Yes, that’s right, I said one month!

These are just illustrations of the power of social media in growing a following, customer list, fan base, or support online for your business or cause… whether it’s on offline business or an online business. Many people think social media tools are only for kids, or that they are only for offline businesses. Well, that was true about three years ago, but not anymore. Facebook, for example, has now launched a Page function that is totally retooled for small business to make it as easy as possible to connect with customers. (This feature used to be called Fan Pages, now it’s just called Pages.)

To find this wonderful tool in Facebook, just click on the Facebook logo in the upper left, and then click “Ads and Pages”, then click “Create a Page”. This will guide you through a fast questionnaire about your business and then you’ll be up and running. Now you’ll want to promote your Page using posts from your personal profile, filling up the Wall and Discussion of your Page with great content, and inviting the Admins and members of Facebook Groups in your industry to join. If you want to you can also run Facebook Ads (which are similar to Google AdWords ads, but generally less expensive) right on Facebook!

And did you know that each Tweet on Twitter is now indexed by Google as its own page on the Internet? That means that whatever you Tweet can be found by people (prospects and customers!) that are searching for those keywords on the Internet. So get busy Facebook-ing and Tweeting about your business and industry, and you’ll attract prospects to you using the power of the searchable Internet.